At the very core of humanity, is a war to survive. It is a paradigm that no animal or man can escape. The civilisational war we see today may be dressed up differently depending on the issue we choose to debate – reclamation of cultural heritage and places of worship, judicial reforms, police reforms, demographic challenge, citizenship to persecuted minorities from neighbouring Islamic nations, the law against forceful religious conversion and the list is endless – however, at the very heart of it, every issue revolves around the survival of an ancient civilisation that has now morphed into a “secular” quip or a people, who have fought, for centuries, for the preservation of that ancient civilisation.
When Rangeela Rasool was published by Mahashay Rajpal, the court had clearly exonerated him saying that commentary on historical figures, including Prophet, does not promote enmity between groups. That, however, did not stop the Islamists from murdering him brutally. It was also craftily brushed under the rug that Mahashay Rajpal had published Rangeela Rasool (written by Pandit Chamupati Lal) after serious provocation by the Muslim community where they chose to publish two books mocking Hindus and their faith. In this case, Mahashay Rajpal and Pandit Chamupati Lal chose to answer words with words. Book with a book. However, for the Islamists who constantly want special treatment and concessions from the Hindu community, that was “blasphemy”, a crime punishable by death under Sharia.
The trajectory of the Nupur Sharma case was not too different. After the discovery of the Shivling, Islamists on television debates and social media started mocking Hindus and their faith. They called Hindus penis worshippers and far worse. During the TimesNow debate, when panellists started mocking the Hindu faith yet again by calling the Shivling a fountain, Nupur had had enough. She lashed out asking the Islamist panellist how he would feel if she was to mock their faith. She did not mock him per se – she asked how he would feel.
And boy did the Islamists answer. They took to the streets, shouted ‘sar tan se juda’ slogans, pissed on her picture, hung her effigies and did everything that one expects from uneducated barbarians.
So far, Nupur Sharma is safe. Alive. However, one has to reconcile with the fact that she is a woman marked for life. Wouldn’t take much for us to reconcile with it, sadly. That is just how the human race is. An atrocity that shocked us yesterday would become the norm tomorrow. The Hindu memory is painfully short and soon, the community would move on to the next outrage cycle leaving Nupur Sharma alone to deal with the consequences of bruising the extremely fragile sentiments of the Islamists.
One would expect the Nupur Sharma issue to be one that united the Left and the Right (for the lack of a better phrase) in India. After all, it is the Left and the Liberals who claim that India is stifling freedom of speech and expression. They also rally vociferously for the right to offend and the right to criticise religion – we saw that in several cases – Munnawar Farooqi being a case in point. The Right, let us assume, would speak up because Nupur Sharma commented on Islam specifically, a religion they allegedly despise, but the Left would speak up for Nupur’s right to speech, therefore, uniting the two factions. That did not happen. Instead, there were cries about Hindus becoming increasingly hateful under the Modi regime, atrocities against Muslims being on the rise and general wails of Islamophobia that we have heard all too often.
Pakistan approached the United Nations demanding action against India due to Nupur Sharma’s “Islamophobic comments”. Bhutto demanded that the UN take note of “rising Islamophobia” in India. Attempting to arm-twist the UN further, Bilawal Bhutto reportedly said, “Silence could be taken as complicity and could lead to further incitement to violence, communal discord and hate incidents”.
Essentially, Pakistan told the UN that if it does not get involved and chastise a nation of 1.3 billion people because one woman politician went on a TV debate and made a 10-second innocuous comment that repeated what the Islamic hadiths say, Hindus would get emboldened to exercise their free speech further and incite the Muslims to riot and indulge in violence. If you find something fundamentally flawed in that argument, where 1.3 billion people need to be condemned for a factually correct statement by one person so that the tolerant, peace-loving, sar tan se juda chanting, stone-pelting and rioting Islamists do not indulge in violence, you are an Islamophobe.
We live in an age where any criticism of Islam or even a comment on the collective behaviour of the Ummah based on facts is seen as Islamophobia. If you report a crime committed by Islamic fundamentalists with a clear religious motive, like conversion, it is Islamophobia. If you condemn the violence that the intolerant minority indulges in, it is Islamophobia. In this case, Nupur’s response to Hinduphobes was Islamophobia and the Hindu community’s condemnation of rape, death and beheading threats to Nupur Sharma was also Islamophobia – they are just upset about the comment, after all. A little anarchy is justified. A little violence is a part of the democratic process, it was said – the state must allow it. If you disagree with this asinine view, you, my friend, are an Islamophobe.
So what is Islamophobia?
The United States House of Representatives in December passed a bill called ‘Combating International Islamophobia Act’. It was introduced by famed Jihad supporter, Ilhan Omar. The bill aims to combat global Islamophobia. The bill allows the Department of State to establish an office to monitor and combat Islamophobia and address related issues and of course, it requires the submission of annual reports to Congress about global Islamophobia and what countries have done to act against it.
The vague, subjective law allows all speech directed at Islam, forget criticising it, to be termed as Islamophobic – a term that in itself is problematic on several levels.
A phobia, by its very definition, is an irrational fear. Islamophobia, essentially means, that anybody who comments negatively against Islam has an irrational fear of Muslims and Islam similar to that of xenophobia or racism. Firstly, it is rather hilarious that a bunch of converts believe that they are a separate race. But beyond that, to accept absolutely anything as “Islamophobia”, we need to evaluate if the fear of Islam or that of the Ummah is one that is irrational, to begin with.
According to the UN definition, Islamophobia refers to irrational hostility and fear toward Islam, and therefore aversion and fear toward Muslims or the majority of them. It also refers to the practical consequences of such hostility in the form of discrimination, unequal treatment toward Muslims (individuals and communities) and their exclusion from the main political and social agenda.
Let us break this down.
The first defining characteristic of Islamophobia is that the fear and/or hostility has to be ‘irrational’. The predominant fear against Islam is that it treats non-Muslims as sub-humans and believes in waging Jihad against those who don’t follow Islam. That Jihad is violent and humiliating. They believe in converting non-Muslims by force and have indulged in several genocides of non-Muslims in the name of Islam. These are all factual statements. We have seen the rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, Jaish e Mohammad, Lashkar e Toiba, Hamas, Al Shabab, Hizballah, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Lashkar e Jhangvi, Boko Haraam etc and the common aim of all of these Islamic organisations that have been designated as terror organisations, is to establish an Islamic Caliphate.
India, specifically, has seen Islamic terrorism perhaps far more than any other nation in the world. Even if we move past the Mughal invasions, the Khilafat movement and the Malabar genocide of Hindus itself is an examples of how Muslims executed Hindus in a concerted manner because they had sworn their allegiance to the Turkish Caliphate. We have seen grooming gangs in the UK, grooming jihad in India, Taharrush in Egypt, Germany, the UK and other places like Pakistan, genocides across the world and sporadic incidents of violence directed at non-Muslims from Sweden, to Africa, the US, UK, Germany, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and everywhere else where a substantial Muslim population exists.
The go-to reason to brand such basic facts as “Islamophobic” is to claim that none of this is the true representation of Islam. An erstwhile Muslim, Waseem Rizvi, had once gone to court with a list of Quranic verses that directed violence towards Kafirs. Here are some of them:
Surah 2 (Al-Baqarah)
Verse 191: And kill them [in battle] wherever you overtake them and expel them from wherever they have expelled you, and fitnah1 is worse than killing. And do not fight them at al-Masjid al-Ḥarām until they fight you there. But if they fight you, then kill them. Such is the recompense of the disbelievers.
Surah 3 (Ali ‘Imran)
Verse 151:
We will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve for what they have associated with Allah of which He had not sent down [any] authority.1 And their refuge will be the Fire, and wretched is the residence of the wrongdoers.
Surah 4 (An-Nisa)
Verse 56: Indeed, those who disbelieve in Our verses – We will drive them into a fire. Every time their skins are roasted through, We will replace them with other skins so they may taste the punishment. Indeed, Allah is ever Exalted in Might and Wise.
Verse 89: They wish you would disbelieve as they disbelieved so you would be alike. So do not take from among them allies until they emigrate for the cause of Allah. But if they turn away [i.e., refuse], then seize them and kill them [for their betrayal] wherever you find them and take not from among them any ally or helper,
Verse 101: And when you travel throughout the land, there is no blame upon you for shortening the prayer,1 [especially] if you fear that those who disbelieve may disrupt [or attack] you.2 Indeed, the disbelievers are ever to you a clear enemy.
This is a short indicative list. The full list of 26 verses listed by Waseem Rizvi can be read here.
Therefore, the argument that it does not represent Islam is certainly not an accurate one. Let us, for a moment, assume that none of this represents Islam and it is indeed a peaceful religion that wishes nothing more than peaceful coexistence. Given that assumption, one has to then ask the question of why so many factions of the Muslim community take to terrorism and overall violence against non-Muslims. Who are those thousands and lakhs of Muslims who have, in India, taken to the streets to demand the beheading of Nupur Sharma? Are they not Muslims and do their wishes not adhere to true Islam?
I am no Maulana and these are questions that the Muslim community has to answer.
Given this, and the fact that their conduct has been similar throughout the world, can we really blame someone for being scared of Islam and can we, logically, call that fear irrational? For most living organisms, anything that threatens their right to exist would be deemed an enemy. Nobody in their right mind can say that all Muslims are the enemy, however, their fear that Islam threatens their existence is not misplaced, given the mountain of evidence and the trail of blood that stand as a witness.
In fact, the term Islamophobia itself reveals the true intent of the Muslim Brotherhood in coining and furthering this term. Islam as a religion has to be open to criticism and it is completely rational to be scared of certain aspects of Islam, as detailed above. One may want to fight “Muslimphobia” and if that is the aim, the phrase used has to be that and not Islamophobia. When one shuts down all criticism of Islam and even deems quoting the Hadiths as blasphemy, one can safely argue that it is not the non-Muslim who is Islamophobic but those taken offence who are truly Islamophobic since they have a fundamental problem with their own texts being quoted.
Frankly, one suspects, that the Muslim community themselves don’t believe that these facts are “Islamophobic”. This term, which was popularised by the widely fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, was only a tool to ensure that all comments and criticism of Islam is stifled. It was a tool to scare people into submission and exploit the innate goodness in the world that makes people not want to hurt the sentiments of others, overall. It is a mythical beast that has been peddled with influence and money to ensure that the atrocities of the Islamists get shielded by piggy-backing on the victims of real atrocities – those who have been discriminated against because of their colour, race or worse, religion (Hindus and Jews come to mind).
If the Muslim community believes that the terrorists, stone pelters, those demanding Nupur Sharma’s beheading etc do not follow “real Islam”, they need to give the world a reason to trust them and explain the parts of their faith that propagate violence. If they think it is a part of Islam, they need to evolve and summarily denounce the last stone pelter and hardliner on the streets. Failing this, Islamophobia as a blanket term cannot stop people from fighting for their own survival by being scared of people who have persecuted those who don’t follow their diktat for centuries.
